Devolution

This seemed reasonable in late June when this signage first went up. Probably also worth mentioning: this will be the fourth restaurant to try and make a go of it on this spot at the corner of Bay and Grosvenor, at the base of a fifty-storey condo (strata for my readers in BC) built about five years ago.

Things are going sufficiently badly (the pandemic; the election; the end of the world as we know it) that I feel at a loss for words, which is strange for me, I know.

Rather than force the issue, here's something I wrote long ago. 

It's the first half of a two-part story. With any luck, by next week I'll have found the second half.

The Tale of the Sixty-Four-Year-Old Man and the Genie

A sixty-four-year-old man was cleaning out his basement one day. He and his wife of forty years were separated and in the process of being divorced. They agreed in their most recent amicable but sad conversation that they should sell the matrimonial home and split the proceeds. He was cleaning the basement to prepare the house to be put on the market.

    In a dark corner where he was sure he’d not been for twenty years, he found an old box, like a strong box, but the metal was shiny and its surface was etched with odd-looking marks. He brushed the surface with his hand to remove some dust.

    WHAM! A blow out of nowhere knocked the box out of his hand and made the SFYO man fall back flat on his ass. Stacks of old magazines and board games broke his fall.

    “What up?” said a mild voice.

    “Who’s there?” said the SFYO man.

    “You called me,” said the voice, “Tell me who you are.”

    It occurred to the SFYO man that he was in the presence of a magical being.

    “Are you going to grant me three wishes?” he asked.

    “Not quite,” said the voice, which the SFYO man could now see belonged to an average-looking person wearing a pair of denim pants, a white t-shirt and running shoes. The genie could have been one of the SFYO man’s students. “I’m going to give you three options.”

    “Oh,” said the SFYO man, a little disappointed as well as confused. “What are my options?”

    “You can live for two more years in perfect happiness. Or, you can live ten more years exactly as you are now. Or, you can live forty more years in sickness and in pain but also with great wealth.”

    “I don’t suppose I can pass on making a choice at all?” 

    “No,” said the genie. “You woke me up; you must choose.”

    “How much time do I have?”

    “Decide now.”

    The SFYO man mulled over his options. The third was a puzzle: 40 years in sickness and pain sounded awful but great wealth could buy a lot of pain killers and health care. The SFYO man had often wondered whether or not he would live to see seventy. Both his parents passed in their mid-sixties and two of his older siblings were already dead. Heart disease ran in the family. So forty more years would be a bonanza. It wouldn’t hurt that he’d be rich, too.

    Ten more years of life sounded OK, especially without sickness and pain. But if he had to spend it all in his current state, that was less OK. A question occurred to him.

    “Is the length of time guaranteed? If I choose the second, does that mean nothing will be able to kill me for ten years?  What if I try to commit suicide?”

    “The length of time is guaranteed. You won’t be able to kill yourself,” replied the genie. 

    “Decide,” the genie added.

    The SFYO man wondered if he could bear ten more years as he was. His wife had left him. His kids never talked to him. Every year, his students seemed more bizarre. He had not felt happy for a very long time. But ten more years, guaranteed. Maybe he could outlive his remaining brother and sister.

    As for the first option, perfect happiness sounded great, but two years! That was so short! It seemed to him these days that years flew by in the same time summer afternoons used to take when he was a kid. And he could not imagine what perfect happiness was.

    “Decide,” said the genie.

***

I wrote that ten years ago, when 64 seemed very far away ...

Thanks for reading!

Stay home, wash your hands, wear your mask, keep your distance!

Karen

They're ba-a-a-ck. Lineups
return to Women's College Hospital